Turbo Conversion Help (The hard way)

[Jakee]

Hey everyone

I know converting an NA to a turbo is frowned upon and all the rest and everyone will tell me to just sell my NA and by a turbo but hear me out.

My car blew a head gasket due to the old owner doing a whole lot of bad work, drilling holes in the thermostat, not getting the heads plained after changing the head gaskets blah blah. So we have pulled the motor out of the car and poured a lot of time into replacing all of the gaskets, all of the leaks, every little thing is up to scratch and the whole car is bulletproof or as much as a Subaru can be. When we ordered the HGs today though, we noticed that none matched, after a little more inspection, we found that the motor had been removed in the past and a turbo one put back in without the turbo. Great. Now as I have spent so much time and effort already making sure that the car is in mint condition, I want to know what else will need to be done to put the turbo back on to the motor.

The car is a 96 BG5 TS-R or so I think but I am beginning to wonder if it's actually a GT that has had the turbo taken off because I always thought BG5's were just turbo and the TS-R badge on the back doesn't look quite right? I don't want to sell it and buy another car because its 'easier', I have pulled the motor apart and I know it has no faults or anything and I don't want to go buying another car that I dont know the condition of and what ever.

[rex-leggy]

bg5 is the chassis code so its generic between the legacys of that era.

if you wanted to change it i would find a crashed bg5 (b or c if possible) and steal the entire loom to swap .

once you swap the loom then you should be able to follow the single turbo conversion thread from there.

i dont know much about the na looms but if you swap everything then i dont see why it wouldn't work, but it will be alot of work thats for sure! if the engines still out then its a good time to swap the loom .

[Jakee]

So what would my shopping list be like?

Turbo loom

Intake manifold

TMIC

Downpipes

*Turbo

*Up pipe

I will edit as it grows, maybe I should start a build thread?

[Divine]

Turbo and uppipe?

[Jakee]

In the ways of wastegate and BOV what would be the cheapest way to go. I may aswell go straight to single turbo yeah? only problem is the costs involved.

[rex-leggy]

 Jakee said:

In the ways of wastegate and BOV what would be the cheapest way to go. I may aswell go straight to single turbo yeah? only problem is the costs involved.

if your using a td or vf series then they have internal wastegates so thats not an issue. bov up to you but if you get a complete v/3 manifold then it should come with the stock bov and return pipe ect.

in your situation id stay away from twin turbo all together.

should have said before ...... i said to get a tt loom because they will be easy to find compared to a complete v/3 loom.

[Jakee]

I was thinking the easist way to do it would be find a gt motor that had a blown head or something and just buy the whole motor and loom and take off what I need and use the rest to make a table lol

[CUDDAS]

 Jakee said:

I was thinking the easist way to do it would be find a gt motor that had a blown head or something and just buy the whole motor and loom and take off what I need and use the rest to make a table lol

id say the easiest way, would be remove what you want to leep from your car & then sell it. buy the turbo model your aafter & go from there saves wasting money/time & effort on something you can pick up for a reasonable price

[Swindog]

 CUDDAS']

[quote name='Jakee said:

I was thinking the easist way to do it would be find a gt motor that had a blown head or something and just buy the whole motor and loom and take off what I need and use the rest to make a table lol

/quote]

id say the easiest way, would be remove what you want to leep from your car & then sell it. buy the turbo model your aafter & go from there saves wasting money/time & effort on something you can pick up for a reasonable price

Yep to above *easy way*

OR find a single turb gc8 motor and loom and ecu and load that in *the hard way*

[Jakee]

 CUDDAS']

[quote name='Jakee said:

I was thinking the easist way to do it would be find a gt motor that had a blown head or something and just buy the whole motor and loom and take off what I need and use the rest to make a table lol

/quote]

id say the easiest way, would be remove what you want to leep from your car & then sell it. buy the turbo model your aafter & go from there saves wasting money/time & effort on something you can pick up for a reasonable price

I dont want to buy another one because I already have this one and the main thing is, I have entirely striped this motor down and put a whole lot of work into it and know it will be reliable. If I bought another car I wouldn't be able to know that everything in the motor is mint

[BLAZD]

Will cost about 3 times the price , it's the little things that add up to huge money

[petrolheadjman]

Yea, i'm doing this the hard way too don't worry you aren't the only one!! I'm planning on doing a whole loom swap / conversion too. Not gonna be fun but will be worth it

[DRFVDR]

It is the "HARD" way but if you want to do it just do it

isnt 94leone doing it the other way going from turbo to NA maybe talk to him as you may be able to swappsies with the loom and bits

[DacerX]

i went turbo to NA with my BC as well

[Jakee]

 petrolheadjman']

Yea, i'm doing this the hard way too don't worry you aren't the only one!! I'm planning on doing a whole loom swap / conversion too. Not gonna be fun but will be worth it

Yeah my car already has the turbo motor in it so I need the rest lol. At least I wont have to run low boost because of the high compression, is your car a BH?

[quote name='We are borg said:

It is the "HARD" way but if you want to do it just do it

isnt 94leone doing it the other way going from turbo to NA maybe talk to him as you may be able to swappsies with the loom and bits

You raise an incredibly helpful point. I should try and get ahold of him.

[petrolheadjman]

Yea man bh5 leggy wagon, TS-R so they have the AVCS engine so i figure this is only going to cost a little bit more than finding a new engine if mine blows

[Jakee]

Oh yeah, mine did blow so I pulled it apart and gave it everything lol. I figure now that I know it is bullet proof it will be the best platform to build off rather than buying a new car and running the risk of simultaneous cambelt breakage head gasket problems lol

[Fastfour]

 rex-leggy said:

bg5 is the chassis code so its generic between the legacys of that era.

BG does that, not the number. As there are BG9's as well as others. Some legacy nut will back me up

[rex-leggy]

yea but the tsr is still bg5 i thought

[Divine]

Bg5 = legacy wagon 2l 4wd

Iirc, my rsb was a bd5 and my vzr a bc4

[Marky]

Are you positive you've actually got a turbo motor in there? Don't want to go to all this effort just to have a grenade (though sometimes they'll still go forever)

My thoughts on it are that if you convert it, you're still left with a bit of an orphan car. Noone would buy a converted (to turbo) car when a factory GTB goes for so little $$ these days, unless it was something really special.

The best thing to buy would be maybe one of the countless ones selling with dead regos or bung HG/BEB for around the 1k - 2k for a minta mark. Theres one in chch, silver, which looks immaculate and 2k for example.

Then you can grab every single bit you want, sell off the rest afterwards and hopefully recoup some cost without having to fart around finding bits and pieces.

Or better yet... if there are things like you say about your car which are mint and you want to keep a hold of, you could swap them from your TSR shell to the GTB, and just find an n/a motor to bung back in your TSR and flick it off. End result you have a genuine GTB (matching engine numbers aren't exactly a common thing with them anyway!) and you could recoup some if not all of the $$ by selling off the TSR.

I dunno... Just my way of thinking. Lost too much money over the years with hairbrained car related plans when there's normally a faster, easier (and cheaper!) way to do things, only ever looks clear in hindsight.

[rex-leggy]

he wants to use his car . its been posted about before and what happened then is happening again (everyone saying to get a gtb)

im most likely like him . i get attached to my cars and would rather do work to them and get a unknown car.

[Marky]

Hence why I also suggested just getting a complete dead / dereg GTB to just swap the bits over from. He could keep his suspension & running gear (and sounds/interior etc also??) and have a relatively trouble - free swap, either way it goes (either dereg GTB bits into TSR or swapping the "good" TSR bits into a dead GTB).

That said you can't put a price on emotion - there's been too many exes I sunk too much $$ into when I should have just upgraded haha

[DRFVDR]

 dacerx said:

i went turbo to NA with my BC as well

yeah but you went about it the RIGHT way fitting an ez30 into it, and how long has it taken and how much has it cost

[Jakee]

 Marky said:

Are you positive you've actually got a turbo motor in there? Don't want to go to all this effort just to have a grenade (though sometimes they'll still go forever)

My thoughts on it are that if you convert it, you're still left with a bit of an orphan car. Noone would buy a converted (to turbo) car when a factory GTB goes for so little $$ these days, unless it was something really special.

The best thing to buy would be maybe one of the countless ones selling with dead regos or bung HG/BEB for around the 1k - 2k for a minta mark. Theres one in chch, silver, which looks immaculate and 2k for example.

Then you can grab every single bit you want, sell off the rest afterwards and hopefully recoup some cost without having to fart around finding bits and pieces.

Or better yet... if there are things like you say about your car which are mint and you want to keep a hold of, you could swap them from your TSR shell to the GTB, and just find an n/a motor to bung back in your TSR and flick it off. End result you have a genuine GTB (matching engine numbers aren't exactly a common thing with them anyway!) and you could recoup some if not all of the $$ by selling off the TSR.

I dunno... Just my way of thinking. Lost too much money over the years with hairbrained car related plans when there's normally a faster, easier (and cheaper!) way to do things, only ever looks clear in hindsight.

That is looking like the most likely option. It is not that I am holding on to the car, it is the motor that I am concerned about holding on to because I know it is bullet proof. But that said, I want to explore all of my options before making a decision.

And I am 100% the motor in it is turbo, not a single NA HG would line up and the first turbo one we looked at was an exact match